Collaborating with Malagasy communities to reach environmental goals

In Madagascar, it has been essential that we work closely with the local communities to create and implement environmental management practices that protect the rich biodiversity of the country and the livelihoods of its people.

Demonstrating our commitment

Rio Tinto subsidiary QIT Madagascar Minerals (QMM) began producing ilmenite from the mine near Fort Dauphin, south east Madagascar at the end of 2008. The country has been identified as one of the world's biodiversity hotspots. This means that it is an area with very high species richness and endemism - ie the number of species that are found nowhere else - but one that has lost more than 75 per cent of its original habitats due to human activities in recent times.

The mineralised zone lies underneath one of the last remaining parcels of littoral - or coastal - forest in Madagascar. To achieve the goal of receiving an environmental permit to mine, QMM had to demonstrate that it could protect biodiversity, and recreate a natural resource base equal, if not superior, to the natural forest on top of the ilmenite deposit.

We committed to various initiatives to help protect the region's biodiversity and also the population's access to the renewable forest resources on which they depend, such as dead wood, tubers and medicinal plants. We decided to create conservation zones on around ten per cent of the total deposit, although we knew that establishing and managing conservation zones in an area of extreme poverty and increasing environmental pressure would be a difficult and expensive task, and would also require us to give up around ten per cent of expected revenues from the deposit.

We made other environmental commitments including rehabilitation of 75 per cent of the deposit after mining with fast growing timber species, to restore wetlands on 15 per cent of the deposit, and to restore ten per cent of the deposit to natural forest around the perimeter of the conservation zone. We also agreed to identify land with the community for off deposit plantations, to provide lumber and firewood. Some 700 hectares of these lands have now been planted, before the loss of one tree due to mining.

We recognised that we would need the cooperation and collaboration of local villagers living in communities on and off the deposit for the implementation and long term effectiveness of our proposals.

Sharing management with communities

A specific concern of the community related to mahampy reeds, found in the wetlands on the deposit. The reeds are used to manufacture essential household items such as baskets and sleeping mats, to braid burial shrouds, and are also sold in the market. To convince the community that their essential natural resources could be protected and restored, we recreated a wetland from top soil collected on the deposit, and demonstrated that the reed would grow even in a stagnant water body. No doubt remains that the reed will remain available in as good if not better quantity and quality after mining as before.

Being a biodiversity hotspot, Madagascar has experimented with various resource management models, among which have been models that decentralise management away from the state directly to the community. But since poor, rural communities can lack the technical expertise and the resources to protect forest resources effectively and manage them sustainably, QMM negotiated a variation on the decentralised model with forestry authorities and with communities.

In 2002, a co-management contract was signed that delegates management responsibilities and authorities to a management committee (COGE), which comprises the two communes bordering the deposit, the local forestry service and QMM. The co-management agreement addresses the on and off deposit resources, and the before, during and after mining management challenges.

In this way, communities are empowered to protect and manage the resources on which they depend, but retain the technical know how of the forest service and the resources of QMM, until the COGE can become self sufficient through income generating activities relating to the natural resource base.

The co-management agreement is reinforced by a "dina", which ensures the population's comprehension of and compliance with the agreement. A dina is a Malagasy social contract, traditionally entered into in order to manage a potential source of social conflict. Dinas describe the situation or problem to be addressed, identify the respective commitments of the various parties, and determine the sanctions to be applied in the case of non compliance. They have come to be legally recognised.

After the first conservation zone, in the Mandena region, two more zones are being established, in Ste Luce and Petriky. These will have their own co-management contracts and dinas.

QMM's efforts and the evidence of the effectiveness of its proposals resulted in the company being awarded the first environmental permit ever delivered to a mining company in Madagascar.